


Cold Snap

by isoisoashley



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, communication issues, he's human and therefore flawed, introspective, jack's not a nice person, loving a whole person, smaller doesn't mean weak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 03:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6688192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoisoashley/pseuds/isoisoashley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, Jack Zimmermann isn’t a particularly nice person.</p><p>Eric Bittle makes him a better person, and god knows he can be kind, but Jack's never been nice and being in love with someone doesn't change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Snap

**Author's Note:**

> This is not angst. It is looking at the ugly things that we sometime think/say and how being in love with someone doesn't magically change you from the type of person who would say "it's a lucky shot" to someone completely different. Work in progress still means progress is being made. 
> 
> Unbeta'd!

The thing is, Jack Zimmermann isn’t a particularly nice person.

 

The whole Samwell team knew it. Those that lived with him in The Haus got to see a different side of Jack than the rest of the team as they lived, ate, and played with him. Jack’s not a bad person, he’s even a good man, but he’s not a particularly _nice_ one and they’re OK with that. Ransom had told Bitty once-upon-a-time that Jack gets “real bitchy near the end of every pre-season” with Holster adding on that he’d eventually go back to “regularly scheduled levels of bitchy” after the first game.

 

There was always a level of anger and anxiety that lay under whatever he did. Waiting to creep up and choke him and when he felt the first tendrils, Jack deflected and often said things, cruel things, that he may or may not mean.

 

_It was a lucky shot._

 

. . .

 

Jack had spent a lot of time in therapy after his overdose.

 

He knew that, despite all of the progress he’d made, there was still a part of him that was terrified of failure. Of being just shy of “good enough”.

 

Of never getting to play in the NHL the way he wanted.

 

Since his overdose he’d also had a new anxiety to add to the plate; he had nearly lost everything once and was afraid that he had. That even though he’d gone to Samwell and played great hockey, even though he had been drafted to the Falconers…

 

He’d never measure up to his father’s legacy.

 

The thing was, Jack knew he didn’t have to. That shouldn’t be the measure of his success in life. Bob Zimmermann was proud that Jack had been drafted...but he didn’t give two shits if his son played hockey or decided to teach history or if he just was in school forever (Jack had, at one point checked. There were limits on how long he could play for the University).

 

Some days, Jack thought he might like to do photography. Travel and just take photos, not caring if he actually got paid for it. Just go wherever he felt like it and take pictures of things he thought were interesting or beautiful or funny.

 

But first he wanted to play in the NHL. He wanted to prove he was good enough--on good days he told him he wanted to prove that only to himself--and, at the heart of it, he loved the game. He wanted to play in the NHL and win a the cup and feel that weight hoisted above his head.

 

In the four years he’d spent at Samwell, he’d done a lot of growing. It wasn’t hard to see, in hindsight, that the changes had started with his unintended friendship with Shitty and gone into some sort of hyperdrive when Eric Bittle had arrived on the team. He’d learned, over the last two years at Samwell, to really _have fun_ again. As an extra bonus, it had made him a better Captain and a better player overall.

 

And Bittle.

 

Eric Bittle hadn’t turned his life upside down, he’d steadied it. He couldn’t help, at times, comparing it with what he’d had with Kent but where Kenny had been sharp edges and sarcasm and competition wrapped in barbed wire spikes of arousal and comfort and love, being with Bitty was warmth and kindness and need and want.

 

Even though he’d been the one to run across campus, to press his lips to Bitty’s, to send that first text, it didn’t mean that when he’d calmed down he didn’t have a nice freak out of his own.

 

Impulse control had always been an issue ( _holding the reins too tight and then...just not holding them at all. Bottle on the floor, scattered pills click_

_click_

_clicking on the tile_ ).

 

But he was different than he was when he was younger, different enough and solid enough and sure enough of what he wanted that there wasn’t going to be another incident on a bathroom floor because of this. Even if things ended badly, he wanted so much to be with Bitty, to explore what that meant. He wanted something for himself, that wasn’t hockey, and maybe that was selfish but he _wanted_ and that was something he hadn’t felt in a long time. And never like this.

 

But Jack also knows enough of himself to know that he could also fuck this up royally. Because he’s made a lot of strides to be a better version of himself, but he is a work in progress and just because he’s happy, just because he is in a relationship with Bitty, doesn’t mean that there aren’t stressors.

 

He’s a player in the NHL. He overdosed before draft and while half the world seems excited he’s back, it also feels like a good portion are holding their breaths waiting for him to mess up ( _waiting with bated breath, excited, hoping. Who doesn’t love a good scandal?)_.

 

He’s in love with a blonde, southern baker. He’s playing in the NHL and should be the happiest he’s ever been. But that blonde baker is a boy and so Jack’s in the closet. Again. This time it’s not anxiety keeping the door shut but his sexuality ( _stupid, stupidest thing in the world, why should it matter? He fell in love with Bittle, with Bitty, not with the fact Bitty was a man_ ).

 

He’s come a long way but Jack still has anxiety and he always will. And when he’s stressed and when he feels angry and when he feels angry, those tendrils reach up and choke him and…

 

 _This isn’t a_ **_JOKE_ ** _. Either get with the program or_ **_QUIT_ **.

 

It often seeps out with cruelty.

 

He wanted to hope that being in love with Bittle would change that, at least where Bitty was concerned. But he knows enough to know that you cannot put a person on a pedestal or they just have further to fall. And he’s old enough to know that one person can’t magically fix all of your problems, even if you love them most of all.

 

It worrys at him, the niggling knowledge that it’s only a matter of time until he says something cruel and hurts Bitty. Maybe beyond repair.

 

. . .  

 

The thing about Eric Bittle is that he’s not small. Or delicate. Or even all that fragile emotionally.

 

He’s 5’6 and a half which is a perfectly acceptable height if you’re not part of a varsity sports team like hockey. The fact that he spent his childhood in a town that worshiped football and went straight into playing hockey on a team that has people like Jack Zimmerman and Adam Birkoholtz on it just made everyone in the world forget that 5’6 and a half is actually a perfectly acceptable height.

 

And, for goodness sake, he’s playing on the hockey team. On the starting line. While he may prefer to bake in his downtime, he doesn’t get out of team workouts. And just because he’s fast does not mean that he isn’t strong along with it. It’s all comparison, though, considering the boys he hangs out with ( _and lives with and the boy he loves_ ).

 

More, Eric grew up in the South. And is gay. So while he had his own issues with roughhousing and checking, there was a certain kind of strength that came from knowing exactly who you were and making peace with it while living in a place that wanted nothing more than to beat it out of you. And while the memory of being locked in the storage closet is traumatizing, he got through it.

 

He also, everyone seems to forget, got through almost an entire year of Jack Zimmermann hating his guts ( _or that’s what it seemed like. They’ve talked through what had actually happened but that’s what it had felt like_ ). He’d been snapped at and berated and yelled at both in private and in front of people. At the highest point of elation his first year, during that game against Yale, Jack had shot down his jubilation without a thought. Even the checking practice had started as something selfish.

 

It wasn’t until much later in the year that Eric learned what the other boys ( _and Lardo_ ) knew, that Jack Zimmermann could be exceptionally kind.

 

He’d fallen in love with the man. And, at graduation, Jack had burst into his old room and cupped Eric’s face in his hands and…

 

Well. Jack had changed his life.

  
But that didn’t mean he was blind to the man’s faults. He’d lived with Jack for a year and played on his team for two. Jack still went cold during pre-season. He lost his temper and snapped and said some truly heinous things.

 

That wasn’t going to change because they were in love, Eric reminded himself, hanging up after a skype call that had ended with sharp words instead of loving ones. It didn’t mean that what Jack said was fair but it also meant that Eric took those tiny kernels of hurt and baked them into some pies instead of letting them fester in his heart. And when Jack called later to apologize, he accepted the apology but didn’t brush it off as no problem.

 

Jack was nervous about it, he could tell. ( _This boy_ ) Jack knew the jagged edges of his own faults. The thing he was forgetting was that Eric knew them too.

 

Eric Bittle knew who he’d fallen in love with, but he also knew his own self worth. It might take some time, but Jack would eventually realize that. And they’d be okay.


End file.
